DRUM Collection: Sociology Theses and Dissertationshttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2804
Tue, 31 Mar 2015 20:44:41 GMT2015-03-31T20:44:41ZPenalties and Premiums: Clarifying Perceptions of Parents in the Professional Workplacehttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/16167
Title: Penalties and Premiums: Clarifying Perceptions of Parents in the Professional Workplace
Authors: Denny, Kathleen
Abstract: Parental status inequality is pervasive in American workplaces. Mothers' wage penalties and fathers' wage premiums are well-documented, with much academic and policy interest invested in explaining why we observe these disparate earnings patterns. Employer discrimination and biased perceptions of parents are likely, although not easily researchable, culprits. In this dissertation, I contribute to the ongoing effort to explain parental status inequality at work by examining how parents are perceived and evaluated in the context of the professional workplace, beyond differences by gender alone. I advance the literature by assessing how perceptions of mothers and fathers vary based on three dimensions: a) their level of involvement with children; b) their race/ethnicity; and c) characteristics of the perceivers. Data come from three sources: two parallel experimental vignette studies in which nationally representative samples of employed adults rated a fictitious job applicant, one male and one female, who varied on parenthood status (non-parent, nominal parent, less involved parent, highly involved parent) and race/ethnicity (white, African-American, Latino, Asian), as well as a semi-structured interview study of 15 employers in the professional sector. Together, results from these studies expound upon our existing knowledge of workplace parental penalties and premiums, yielding three major findings: 1) Fathers received an involvement premium as highly involved fathers, but not mothers, were offered higher salaries than their childless and less involved counterparts; 2) The documented perceptual penalty leveled at mothers in the workplace was most acutely directed at white mothers, whereas Asian mothers, by contrast, were perceived most favorably among women; and 3) Mothers may suffer from an interpersonal penalty in the workplace as employers observed that their childless employees perceive parent coworkers with resentment and as being unfairly advantaged. Together, these results bring the cultural terrain of parental status inequality into sharper relief. Following a discussion of the dialectical relationship between culture and policy for reducing parental status inequality at work, I conclude by calling for a reconceptualization of the ideal worker norm based on evidence of a cultural shift underway in how parenthood, namely fatherhood, is interpreted in the workplace.Wed, 01 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMThttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/161672014-01-01T00:00:00ZA TALE OF TWO CITIES: A CASE STUDY OF PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL DISORDER IN TWO BALTIMORE CITY NEIGHBORHOODS, USING GIS AND SPATIAL METHODShttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/16130
Title: A TALE OF TWO CITIES: A CASE STUDY OF PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL DISORDER IN TWO BALTIMORE CITY NEIGHBORHOODS, USING GIS AND SPATIAL METHODS
Authors: Timleck, Andrew
Abstract: The purpose of this study is to explore how urban residents respond to their social and physical environments--what they define as problems and how they respond to them. I focus on one large, city--Baltimore, Maryland--and then compare two very different neighborhoods within it: Federal Hill, a well-off, and fashionable, area with mostly white residents, contrasted with Sandtown-Winchester, a neighborhood plagued by urban blight and crime, and where the majority of residents are black. I use a geographic information system (GIS) and spatial analyses to explore neighborhood call rates regarding physical and social incivilities, using the traditional sociological framework of "social disorder" as a theoretical lens for exploring similarities and differences in what disorders increase or decrease call rates.
I use more commonly applied stochastic methods for much of the analysis (statistical means and ordinary least squares statistics), but I also explore, in a tentative way, the potential power of spatial methods, which are not widely used or known in sociology, to reveal more about what makes these spaces similar and different and how they affect call rate patterns.
The predictive models demonstrate mixed results when predicting variation in the call rate patterns of the two neighborhoods. Income, education, and population-density effects are consistent, yet weak, positive predictors in both areas, while other indicators (home ownership, number of vacant houses, etc.) exhibit substantive positive effects in the wealthier neighborhood but none in the poorer. Neighborhood homogeneity and stability show negative impacts on rates, but depending on the neighborhood.
I focus on how local variations in action, even under similar circumstances, may depend not only on residents' aggregate capacity to commit to change, but also on how neighborhood space is internalized as a "neighborhood generalized other" as a "community," according to George Herbert Mead, either constraining or enhancing engagement. This within- and between-neighborhood variance in the strength and direction of predictor variables, and in their capacity to predict residents' calling patterns, underscores issues of validity and operationalization regarding indicators traditionally used to measure social disorganization, and how spatial methods can be valuable corrective tools.Wed, 01 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMThttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/161302014-01-01T00:00:00ZParental Resources, Educational Progression, and Family Formationhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/15800
Title: Parental Resources, Educational Progression, and Family Formation
Authors: Reeder, Lori
Abstract: In this dissertation, I use longitudinal data (1997-2011) to explore two types of financial constraints during the transition to adulthood. First, I explore the relationship between parental resources (income and net household worth) and educational transitions among U.S. men and women. I revisit the Mare model of educational transitions which asserts that parental resources decline in importance with each educational transition. I find that, for the current cohort of young adults, parental net worth, in particular, is positively associated with high school graduation, four-year college attendance, and four-year college completion. Yet, the magnitude of the effect of parental net worth does decline with each educational transition. Furthermore, after controlling for parental income and net household worth, non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic students are more likely to graduate from high school and to enroll in college, yet remain less likely to graduate from college. For enrollment into professional or graduate school, the effect of parental resources is statistically nonsignificant. Next, I examine the relationship between parental resources and timing of women's first birth. I find that parental resources impact first birth timing, wherein compared to women from low-resource families, women from middle-resource families have a lower likelihood of first birth through the mid-20s and women from high-resources families were found to have substantially lower likelihood of having a first birth by age 30 or 31. I find that greater and earlier incidence of Hispanic women's first birth is entirely explained by differences in parental resources and other sociodemographic characteristics. Furthermore, differences in parental resources explain the higher likelihood of first births in teen years, and most of the higher likelihood of first births in the 20s, among Black women. Finally, I consider whether student loan debt delays family formation for men and women attending four-year college. I find that student loan debt is associated with later transitions to marriage and first birth, for both women and men, but that only for women does a statistically significant association remain after controlling for income, family background, and other socio-demographic characteristics, and even then only at low levels of debt.Wed, 01 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMThttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/158002014-01-01T00:00:00ZThe Spatial Configuration of American Inequality: Wealth and Income Concentration through US Historyhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/15671
Title: The Spatial Configuration of American Inequality: Wealth and Income Concentration through US History
Authors: Albrecht, Scott
Abstract: Drawing on a variety of data sources--national surveys and censuses, probate and tax records, wage series and rich lists--I identify five period or regimes in US history with distinct wealth and income distributions. I argue that this periodization of inequality in the United States is a product of Arrighi's systemic cycles of accumulation. Each cycle of accumulation is associated with a spatial configuration, a global pattern of interdependent technologies, infrastructure, institutions, networks and social relations, and ideologies, that structures the distribution and flow of wealth. Interdependence in the components of the spatial configuration means that there are periods of relative stability delineated by moments of cascading change when space is reconfigured; new patterns of wealth and income concentration emerge as a result. The principal contribution of this approach is to further our understanding of the impact of global processes on within-country wealth and income concentration; we cannot isolate domestic market institutions and technological change from global political and economic competition.Wed, 01 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMThttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/156712014-01-01T00:00:00Z